Lolita’s former trainers fight against the orca’s release to home waters. They fear it’ll end in tragedy.

Though it may look like Lolita the orca’s life will have a fairytale ending of freedom, a group of her former trainers have come out against the idea of releasing her in the wilds of Puget Sound, where she was captured in 1970.

Lolita, the 57-year-old orca, has lived for more than 50 years in cramped quarters at the Miami Seaquarium, where she would perform live shows daily. She was deemed officially retired last year.

Last week, new Seaquarium ownership, along with Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and animal-rights activists from the group Friends of Toki, announced plans to relocate the 7,000-pound whale from South Florida to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest.

If all goes as planned, Lolita, who also goes by the Native American name Tokitae, and its nickname Toki, would initially live in a 200-yard-long pen on the shores of Puget Sound before graduating to a 15-acre netted enclosure, which would give her access to the acoustic communication of her original orca pod.

Whether she would eventually swim free and rejoin that pod, which Irsay and others hope still includes her mother, remains to be seen.

Though the announcement was met with joy from those wishing her free for decades, a group of her former trainers have begun voicing concerns about whether the aging whale would survive the stress of a 3,000-mile journey by truck, plane and barge, and the transition into an entirely new environment.

The opposition group, Truth4Toki, said they are a collection of 35 marine mammal experts consisting of “Toki’s current and former trainers, veterinarians and caretakers.”

They’ve started a petition to stop the relocation, which as of Thursday had more than 7,000 signatures, and they are proposing instead that Lolita be relocated in-state, perhaps to SeaWorld Orlando, a mere four or five hours by truck. SeaWorld had no comment on the situation.

The group cites Lolita’s age, health and alleged fear of change as reasons to not airlift her across the country.

They’re also worried about the world into which she will swim. The Puget Sound has a dwindling salmon population, the water carries diseases, they say, and Lolita, too, could expose local orcas to illnesses they’ve never encountered.

And in the end, the group says there’s no guarantee that she would want to reunite with her old pod, or that they would have any interest in her.

Truth4Toki’s Shanna Simpson, who’s currently the animal curator at the Topeka Zoo in Kansas, was one of Lolita’s trainers at the Miami Seaquarium from 2002 to 2009, when the whale was in her mid-30s to mid-40s.

“She’s just incredible,” said Simpson of Lolita. “I’ve been working with animals for 23 years now, and she’s still my favorite.” But Simpson thinks relocating Lolita to Puget Sound is a dire mistake.

“She is not an animal that adapts well to change. Anytime there was a new sound, or maintenance being done around the park, anything new, we would see some anxiety-type behaviors from her and we would have to be really proactive to try to prevent her from getting nervous. [That’s] one of the reasons I’m so concerned.”

At last week’s news conference, Charles Vinick of Friends of Toki, the nonprofit pushing for the whale’s release, said that Seaquarium trainers need to teach Lolita to be comfortable with being lifted and moved, and that they are currently teaching her to swim into a stretcher harness without fear.

“You don’t want to force her to do anything — nor could we if we wanted to,” he said.

Vinick said it’s important to remove all stress from the move. “So you train her so this is joy — she’s used to being lifted up. She does that hundreds of times, so nothing she experiences on a transport is ever a surprise. You want her to be calm and gentle and loved every step of the way,” he said.

Simpson is unconvinced. “I cannot fathom what is going to happen to her whenever they put her in a stretcher and airlift her out of that pool, let alone drive her to the airport, let alone fly her on a plane,” she said. “I just can’t even fathom what this animal is going to go through. ... It breaks my heart.”

Simpson has had some experience transporting cetaceans — she helped transport two Pacific white-sided dolphins from an aquarium in the northeast to Miami, she said. “These dolphins are little, and it took a year of planning and coordinating. Transport, no ifs, ands or buts, it’s stressful for every animal.”

Too old for change?

Truth4Toki refers to the 57-year-old whale as “geriatric.” Simpson said that in whale terms that means she’s lived past her life expectancy.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, male orcas in the wild live to about 30 years and females to about 50 years, though some can reach age 90.

The Seaquarium’s press release about the matter said, “her most recent independent health and welfare assessment … indicated that her energy, appetite and engagement in daily activities is becoming reasonably stable.”

At last week’s news conference, Mayor Levine Cava said that in 2022, the Seaquarium and Miami-Dade County brought in a third–party veterinarian to conduct an independent medical evaluation. Last June, the results, made public, showed “demonstrated improvement.”

“Toki has been under the care of the county’s finest marine veterinary experts,” she said.

Pritam Singh, of Friends of Toki, said last week that all of Lolita’s health records will be public.

Vinick added in an email that, “The way in which she [Lolita] has rebounded from previous medical challenges and is now stable is what makes this next step appropriate for her continued health and welfare. … Toki’s health and welfare are our highest priorities.”

The Miami Seaquarium said in an email that they have no further information beyond what was in the March 30 press release, and “we are not permitted to have anyone enter her area for filming,” as per their agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Miami New Times reported in December of 2022 that, because of the new licensing agreement with the USDA, Lolita is barred from performing and being exhibited to the public.

Potential risks in Puget Sound

Simpson is also concerned about the environment where Lolita will end up. She said that during her tenure, Lolita lived in treated salt water that was cooled to 50 to 55 degrees.

“I’m worried about pollutants, pathogens,” said Simpson. “She’s geriatric. Anything she’s exposed to, it could kill her. She’s just at that point in her life. It’s no different than your 95-year-old grandmother in a nursing home.”

Vinick responded in an email: “I think many people have missed the central issue that we are planning a netted enclosure in ocean waters.” He noted that Toki would reside in an area “with waves, currents, tidal swings, etc., inside a netted enclosure where she receives 24/7 veterinary and animal care. … Many of the concerns that have been voiced do not speak to the plan for providing Toki life-time care in an enriching, vibrant environment.”

Keiko: a triumph or a cautionary tale?

The story of Keiko has become a lightning rod for both sides of the Lolita debate.

Keiko was a trained orca who played the lead role in three 1990s Free Willy movies, about releasing a captive orca into the ocean. The films inspired a movement to return Keiko to the wild himself, and he was eventually returned to waters off Iceland, where he had been captured at age two.

There is vehement disagreement about whether his release was a success or a failure. Proponents are happy he was freed from a cramped pool. Others say he was cruelly removed from the only world and family he knew.

“What’s frustrating for me is them saying that she [Lolita] is going to be with her family,” Simpson said. “That is the most anthropomorphic and inaccurate statement. … Toki doesn’t know her mother. That is not scientific. That is purely human emotion thinking that Toki’s going to swim happily off into the sunset with her family.

“That’s not how the animal kingdom works. I encourage people to look at the Keiko story. That was an epic fail. We’ve already done this. Why are we going to do this again to another animal and kill them, just like they did Keiko?” she said.

Vinick seemed to temper expectations at the news conference. “Is there an opportunity to acoustically connect with [Lolita] family? Without a doubt,” he said “and potentially physically over time. But she’s the one who guides us — [it’s about] her health and mobility. Her family travels 100 miles a day. She’s a long way from that marathon swimming. Can she do it? We don’t know. But we’ll learn that from her.”

Keiko was first removed from a dilapidated Mexico City aquarium, then rehabilitated in Oregon before being brought to Iceland, where trainers worked with him, both in a sea pen and from a boat in the open ocean, trying to teach him to hunt, and attempting to reintroduce him to local wild orcas.

Vinick, who was also involved with efforts to release Keiko, said that to the best of his knowledge, Keiko did not interact with his former pod.

“He interacted with wild orcas, swimming close to them and appearing to feed nearby large groups of orcas,” he said, “but he did not join nor was he accepted by a pod to live in a family unit.”

According to Truth4Toki’s Mark Simmons, an orca trainer who was in charge of Keiko’s behavioral strategy for two years in Iceland, Keiko never learned to fully hunt and never lived freely.

He fears the same fate for Lolita. “We have deliberately used behavioral science and conditioning to create human relationships [with Lolita] for 50 years. You can’t unshoot that gun,” he said.

He admits that the orca capture practices of the 1960 and ’70s were horrific, as wranglers ripped animals from their families, and that Lolita’s current 80-foot by 35-foot pool is woefully inadequate. But he fears that the current relocation plan will remove Lolita from her “foster family” of trainers, “the only thing that she knows.”

Advocates say Lolita was older than Keiko when she was captured — he was two, she was four — meaning she could have acquired more hunting skills, and may have more memory of her pod’s linguistics.

Simmons was a marine mammal trainer at SeaWorld Orlando from 1987 to 1996, and now runs an app that zoos use to guide animal care. His view on what makes orcas happy is quite different than those of Irsay and the Friends of Toki group, who are working to relocate her.

Keiko “doesn’t know that his pool in Mexico was abysmally small, all he knows is he had a great relationship with people, and that’s what he wanted.” Of Keiko’s Iceland experience Simmons says, “Every opportunity where they tried to introduce him to wild whales, tried to get him in the open ocean, he always, without fail, returned seeking people.”

He now sees the Keiko experiment negatively. “People go, ‘Well, hey, he died free.’ He suffered horribly. ... He didn’t understand what was going on. He would hit his head against boats. He would try to follow strangers.”

Simmons says the local Icelandic whales saw him as a threat and treated him as such. “They could give two s---- about Keiko.”

He believes that integrating a formerly captive whale into a wild pod is fraught with difficulty. “When a stranger comes in [to a pod’s territory], he’s weird. He acts different. Keiko got his butt kicked,” he said.

He explained that the native pod would tighten up, make threatening sounds by fluke slapping and jaw popping. The interactions can become physical, if the pod chases the newcomer or bites his peduncle, the area at the base of the tail. Simmons said he witnessed this during the first introduction.

He said he and four other colleagues resigned afterward.

There’s no way to know if the Icelandic orcas would have eventually accepted Keiko. Simmons said Keiko was not “released,” but rather, he was separated from his training boat when a storm rolled in.

The boat returned to port, and Keiko headed east, traveling 870 miles to a fjord in Norway, where he stayed for the remainder of his life. Here, he was free to roam, but essentially stayed put. Trainers fed him daily, and he would often allow fans to pet him — until Norwegian authorities declared that illegal.

His trainers would take him on “walks” by leading him around the fjord in a small boat. They said he would often explore outside the fjord alone at night.

According to the International Marine Mammal Project, Keiko gained 3,000 pounds once removed from captivity, followed a wild orca pod, and swam on his own to Norwegian waters. But he was never able to fully integrate socially with wild orcas.

Keiko died of pneumonia at age 27 — slightly less than the average age of death in a wild male orca.

Simmons, who is a firm believer in zoos, said, “Lolita’s current situation is inexcusable. It is a failure on every successor that has owned that park. ... They should have built her a new habitat 40 years ago, and should have worked on getting her a social group of her own kind.”

He thinks the best solution for Lolita, if money were no object, would be to build her a new pool on the Miami Seaquarium property, but “a hell of a lot bigger and deeper” than her current home, and attach a medical pool so she could be treated easily for future ailments.

Lolita’s relocation would not happen for another six months, maybe a year, maybe longer. Those involved say each step is determined by her health. She’ll be close to 60 years old by the time she reaches Puget Sound.